"The pornography filtering system praised by David Cameron is controlled by the controversial Chinese company Huawei, the BBC has learned. UK-based employees at the firm are able to decide which sites TalkTalk's net filtering service blocks." The irony. It hurts.

Still, we've always been painted a picture of how evil some parts of the world are. Spying on citizens, censorship, freedom of speech suppression, Internet filtering, non-democratic behavior by the government, etc... little did we know it's just the same on our side of the fence.

Please don't mention God,because I'm quite happy we haven't had any visitations from TempleOS lately, although after those Snowden revelations all those CIA/FBI claims of TempleOS may not be so far fetched after all.

Oh yeah, that really makes sense, the Da Vinci Code provided some informations about the descendant of Jesus, while obviously the Bible contained the proofs of the upcoming NSA/FBI manipulations since 2000 years !

Well, China only started blocking VPN connections since the middle of last year, while the major Canadian ISPs have been applying the same technology (DPI) to throttle Internet Traffic (downgrading all encrypted traffic) since at least 2006

Why criticize Cameron for choosing a Chinese firm? I mean, assuming one is on board with implementing a net censorship regime in the first place, then he might as well go to the world experts, no?

I despise the whole thing with a passion, but really would this have been any less controversial with a system developed elsewhere? I would hope people find this appalling for what it is rather than where it came from.

But don't you see? Surveillance programs developed in the West are good because they're protecting you freedom and rights and cute little kittens (and no, not the profits of big business. Not that. At all).
All this foreign stuff is just evil, horrible foreign stuff. You can tell because it's not from the West. Fu-manchu rises again!

I despise the whole thing with a passion, but really would this have been any less controversial with a system developed elsewhere?

Yes it would.

See, censorship in a democracy is already VERY controversial. Then the fact that they use tax payer money to fund a Chinese supplied system makes the already VERY controversial into a holy-fuck controversial.

See, people aren't saying that it's only controversial because Huawei is selling the system. You would have noticed that there's already discontent with the plan.

And now they're complaining that an already bad plan is revealed to be worse.

It doesn't matter WHO restricts your freedom, it matters that it is done. You think it will magically be less restrictive with Cisco or Juniper?

Did you not understand the equations?

Have you not heard of the phrase "adding insult to injury"?

You seem to have a misapprehension here. I'm not saying the fact of Huawei increases the "Censorship" variable in the equation.

See, the "Censorship" variable is the same in all of the equations. Unless all the mentioned and unmentioned companies are the same, given that the "Censorship" variable is constant, it is logical that some results of the equation, of which the "Censorship" variable is constant, will be less than other equations with the same constant "Censorship" variable*.

To look at it another way, let's say someone ran over your dog and it happened in front of you. In one scenario, the person gets out of the car and kicks your dog's limp body to the side. In another scenario, the person backs over your dog and goes over it again once or twice.

In both cases, the dog's dead. What's done is done. But there's something about the second scenario that doesn't sit as well with us as with the first.

Adding insult to injury is making a bad situation worse, but how exactly is technology from a Chinese firm adding insult to injury?

"let's say someone ran over your dog and it happened in front of you. In one scenario, the person gets out of the car and kicks your dog's limp body to the side. In another scenario, the person backs over your dog and goes over it again once or twice."

The second scenario is intended to reflect evil qualities in the person, so are you trying to infer that Chinese firms have evil qualities in and of themselves? If so, then that's the antithesis of my original post, if not then I don't get your analogy.

Adding insult to injury is making a bad situation worse, but how exactly is technology from a Chinese firm adding insult to injury?

Because the Chinese firm in question is Huawei.

"let's say someone ran over your dog and it happened in front of you. In one scenario, the person gets out of the car and kicks your dog's limp body to the side. In another scenario, the person backs over your dog and goes over it again once or twice."

The second scenario is intended to reflect evil qualities in the person, so are you trying to infer that Chinese firms have evil qualities in and of themselves? If so, then that's the antithesis of my original post, if not then I don't get your analogy.

The second scenario is NOT intended to reflect evil qualities in the person. It is intended to reflect that, even in a irreparably bad situation, you can still add to it to make it worse.

If you're an atheist like me, a dead pet dog is a dead pet dog. No doggy heaven. But I still wouldn't like to see my dead pet dog's body treated badly.

Twice you've said "Chinese firm", as though all the criticism is because the firm is Chinese. The point is not that it's Chinese, it's because it's Huawei.

Your use of the word irony hurts.
Irony would be to consult with Huawei (actually, make that any big networking corp.) on how to protect the internet freedoms of the citizens.
But this is something else and whatever it is it's not irony. The words "expected" and "sad" comes to mind.